Why Turner is still contemporary

Charles Saatchi's sensible assertion that museums are there to ensure that "the key works that represent developments in art are available to be examined by future visitors" is somewhat undermined by his assertion that Tate should sell off its Turners (A legacy Turner would have approved of, 15 February). Tate's continuous programme of lending works to museums across the world, on top of the access it provides to all the Turners at Millbank, surely more than fulfils the artist's wishes. (Indeed the scale of the programme would probably astonish him.)

As for the unseemly flogging off abroad of our national collections in order to fund more fashionable purchases, happily that isn't necessary. Our galleries are actually rather rich in modern and contemporary British holdings, and do a fine job in sharing them with wide audiences. And today, much more interesting than the question of who owns art is the question of its availability to the public. The popularity of the current Freud and Hockney exhibitions in London, with Hirst due soon, suggests the UK's contemporary art scene has, in fact, not been healthier since the days of Turner himself.Stephen DeucharDirector, The Art Fund

• I was delighted to learn of the enthusiasm that Charles Saatchi has for JMW Turner. It is a passion that we share here at Turner Contemporary, and in response I would like to invite him to Margate to enjoy our current exhibition Turner and the Elements. I believe it will ease some of his concerns about access to works from the Turner bequest.

Turner and the Elements includes 88 watercolours and paintings by JMW Turner, 80 of which are on loan from Tate in London, reflecting their desire to have items from their collections out on public display. The exhibition has been to Hamburg and Krakow before Margate, reaching international as well as UK audiences.

Thanks to investment over the past decade the UK has a greatly improved visual arts infrastructure. Turner Contemporary is one of a network of galleries across the country able to present works from public collections, such as Tate, giving audiences many more opportunities to see wonderful art and bringing valuable tourist income to towns such as Margate.Victoria PomeryDirector, Turner Contemporary

• Charles Saatchi's admirable attempt to redistribute the archives of the world's great collections is alas doomed to failure. The wrangling and the outcry that resulted would see to that. He nevertheless indirectly addresses three important problems: the vulnerability of the world's art to future disaster because of its concentration in so few institutions, the invisibility of so much of this art to the general public – MoMA in New York alone contains 150,000 objects – and the increasingly troublesome and expensive problem of transporting very fragile objects around the world.

The solution to this problem is to make (at the least) the two-dimensional pieces (paintings and drawings) available as photographic copies of the highest quality for the world's museums. The technology to create almost perfect copies exists. Here is the opportunity for a project supervised by the United Nations and supported by an international group of enlightened donors to safeguard our art for the foreseeable future. Dr Simon HarrisRossett, Clwyd

• Charles Saatchi didn't get where he is today without being an aggressive seller, or should that be buyer? If you cut through the flimflam, his thesis is dispose of some Turners and Tate Britain can strengthen its "weak group of works by the YBA generation". This seems to be a not entirely disinterested argument.

JMW Turner has been treated shabbily by the nation ever since he made his bequest. Before there is any consideration of dispersal of the Turner bequest, all alternative ways of allowing the world to see his works should be explored. A complete catalogue and high-resolution scanning of all of the works would be a start. Exhibit A: the British Library's electronic version of Audubon's Birds of America. We know Charles Saatchi has a lot to say, but is he prepared to assist with this essential first stage?Dr John OsleyAbergele, Clwyd

• Charles Saatchi started me thinking, as his exhibitions used to do. Rather than flogging off some of the nation's cultural "silver" from Turner's bequest to overseas institutions, why not liberate all the massive stores of art and artefacts hidden away in the vaults of London's public museums and galleries by dispersing them around existing, and new purpose-built, cultural centres in every major town in Britain?

The sustained success of Tate St Ives and Liverpool, and popular one-off exhibitions such as the Vermeers at Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, shows what a boon that would be for the public good and local economies. The skilled and manual jobs required in buildings construction, curating, management, education, catering and security would tackle unemployment locally, and increase tax revenues while sustainably reducing the welfare bill. Art can raise civic pride, and art therapy ease a range of mental – and NHS – pressures.

So that people, including a significant influx of overseas tourists, can visit these cultural hotspots, while spending money locally, the government could use the £32bn earmarked for shaving train times between London and Birmingham to upgrade the rail network to provide an efficient, cross-country, low-carbon transport infrastructure, and more sustained regeneration. The IMF and credit rating agencies would approve such public- and private-sector-led growth.

To further reduce carbon emissions, and meet energy demand in these newly stimulated areas, the government could change energy policy to favour community-based renewable and energy-efficiency investments instead of rip-off utilities and fossil fuel multinationals. Again, the employment, manufacturing, retail and servicing benefits would be significant. Local energy markets are much more efficient than a national grid (between 60% and 70% of a power station's fuel content is lost in generation and transmission, whereas up to 90% of locally generated energy is used). Household and small business energy bills would be lower too.

An overhaul of inefficient rubbish and recycling can ensure that waste doesn't increase from these sustainable regeneration efforts. In Sweden, closed-loop waste-resource systems boost municipal growth by companies collecting and reusing the full range of recyclable materials and organic wastes as resources and energy (biogas, biofuels and electricity), with still further job, tax, welfare and environmental gains.

Parliament could find the funds to pump-prime these investments, and for decent public education and health services, with manageable debt pay-back, by insisting the chancellor claw back the estimated £70bn lost annually through tax evasion – and have enough money to finally establish the dedicated Turner Museum promised to our greatest artist in return for his magnificent legacy.